Okay, I owe you all an apology. I said I would be giving monthly updates, and I have delivered precisely zero since the February update. March, April, May, and most of June have come and gone without a single leaderboard check-in. I wish I could frame this as some kind of deliberate tactical silence. I cannot. Life simply got in the way, and if I am being completely honest, so did a distinct lack of birding activity on my part.
The honest version is this: life with a young family, a demanding job, and a wife who is considerably more sane than me when it comes to chasing birds does not leave a lot of room for obsessive listing. The Bindo app sat largely ignored. The binoculars were mostly pointed at leopards and lions, which is not exactly a hardship, but does nothing for your position on the leaderboard.
An up close view of the rather impressively long canines of the Maxim’s Male.
My most recent leave after a 10-week cycle in the bush was a trip to Mozambique. And before you ask, no, it did not help. The whole point was beach time for the kids, and that is exactly what it was. I have no complaints. But I will say this, Mozambique was not particularly kind to my competitive spirit. I ticked an absolutely cracking list of birds while we were there. Trumpeter Hornbill, Olive Sunbird, Gorgeous Bushshrike, White-fronted Plover, Great Cormorant, White-eared Barbet, Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird, Common Bulbul, Black-bellied Starling, Red-capped Robin-Chat, Brimstone Canary. I also had what I am fairly confident was a Eurasian Whimbrel, though I never got the binoculars on it, so that one stays in the “pretty sure” column.
Every single one of those birds also occurs in South Africa. Every single one of them counts for nothing this year. The rules are the rules, and we agreed to them, but I would be lying if I said watching a Gorgeous Bushshrike in a Mozambican coastal thicket and mentally filing it under “irrelevant” did not sting a little.
Leaderboard as of beginning of July. 9th place is not bad, but it’s one hell of a climb up to the podium from here.
So where does that leave me? Sitting in 9th place with 269 birds. The leader, Graeme Gullacksen, is on 396. That is a 128-bird gap heading into the toughest stretch of the year, which is, to put it mildly, not ideal.
My two recent ticks tell that story well enough: a Great White Pelican in May, which was a good one, and a Marico Sunbird at the end of June. That is my rate of accumulation right now. The summer migrants have gone. What we are left with now are the residents, and in winter, a lot of them are quiet, cryptic, or actively trying to make your life difficult. We are entering lark, pipit and cisticola territory. If you have ever tried to separate an African Pipit from a Plain-backed Pipit in the 6am misty golden winter morning light, you will know why people go slightly mad at this time of year.
The one genuine highlight of the season is happening right inside camp. The aloes are flowering, and the sunbirds have arrived in numbers. The sightings around camp have been spectacular, and for what it is worth, on the competitive front, that is where I found the Marico Sunbird, amongst all the other sunbirds, but they had already been ticked earlier in the year.
The next trip is a family holiday to Dullstroom. Fly fishing is the priority, family time is the point, and the binoculars will be coming regardless. The Mpumalanga Highlands hold a different suite of species, montane birds you simply cannot access at this altitude, and at this point, every biome I can get into counts.
I will also be putting together a proper piece on binoculars soon. If you have been thinking about getting into birding and that is the part holding you back, I have been using the Swarovski CL Companion 10×30 for a while now, and the short version is that they are magnificent. Full thoughts to follow.
Six months left. 128 birds to claw back. The gap is real, but the year is not over.
Sean Zeederberg
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